Congressional Quarterly has posted their House and Senate ratings as of now. On the House side, Democrats are now at 219 and the Republicans are at 180 with 36 toss-ups. This falls back into my view that Republicans must sweep the 40 targeted Democrats--a really high goal.
The Senate--CQ has Democrats now at 48 and Republicans at 40 with 12 seats at toss-up. Yesterday I saw a CQ projection that Republicans would take the Senate with 50-49. But this would mean taking 10 out of 12 toss-ups.
The teabaggers are going for the gold in New Hampshire and Delaware. In New Hampshire,the Manchester Union-Leader has endorsed the teabagger.
The phony doctor's association which counts Rand Paul as a member has issued a statement that Barack Obama won the 2008 election by mass hypnosis. Jack Conway should raise this in the Kentucky Senate race.
The Tan Man said today that he would be open to Obama's tax plan for the middle class, and the possibility of foregoing the tax cuts for the wealthy. It's no coincidence that a raft of polls came out this week showing that close to a majority want those tax cuts to lapse, and another 15% want all tax cuts to lapse. This accounts for the Republican hesitation.
The progressive think tank NDN broke down the Tan Man's Economic Plan for House Republicans and concluded Boehner's plan would increase the national debt by $3.781 trillion. His dandy idea of going back to 2008 level spending on non-defense discretionary spending would only save $36 billion next year and nothing the following two years because Obama already declared a freeze on discretionary spending.
No one burned any copies of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics yesterday. There were Qurans burned by individuals at the 9/11 commemorations in New York and one lone wolf tore up pages from the Quran in front of the White House. I was thinking of burning Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy because Al Qaeda took its name from it right after it was published in Arabic and became a best-seller among young Muslims. If Dune had been published then, it would have become the name of Bin Laden's group and been more appropriate.
Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin's celebration of 9/11 with their boozefest was preceded by prayers from the "Christian" fringe pastors, one of whom said that Obama was too much of a coward to declare America a "Christian" nation. Maybe it really is because it's historically not true.
Islamophobia seems to be breaking out around the country and fueled by even the moderate Right. 9 years after the fact, this seems strange but remember the Republican leadership at the time of 9/11 was heavily tied to the Saudis and had to put a lid on any reaction. The Right always believed we are in a holy war against Islam and now they can become full-throated about it.
But one interesting fact remains-- the last Gallup poll shows that only 1% of Americans believe terrorism is the number 1 issue facing the country, compared to 46% right after 9/11. And now all these people exist in the burning remains of the neoconservative movement and among 2012 presidential aspirants who need the radical Christian Right to survive the primaries.
Speaking of which, Newt Gingrich speaking at a Values Summit meeting ,along with other presidential wannabes, flashed onto Dinesh D'Souza's strange comment in the National Review that Obama had the "Kenyan anti-colonial mentality". Newt said that was the most brilliant thing he had heard in six months. I distinctly remember that Kenya was a most reliable African ally in the Cold War and actually supported us out of principles, not bribes.
Dinesh's remarks reflect the rhetoric against Obama coming from London during the Presidential campaign. Ancient conservatives, who resented losing the colony, claimed that Obama's father was a terrorist. They linked him to the Mau-Maus. This got some traction in the states but then wiser heads prevailed knowing that Jomo Kenyatta, the head of the Mau-Maus, had been a long-time friend of the United States. So Newt is just recycling fourth-hand nonsense. Newt even said that Obama had learned Saul Alinsky's trick of disguising one's true self to deceive people into supporting your radicalism. That must account for Obama's sly endorsement of small businesses and corporate tax breaks.
If you actually want to read about Saul Alinsky, Nicholas Von Hoffman has a new memoir out recalling his lifelong friendship with Saul Alinsky and recording what Alinsky actually said about his work. Saul Alinsky's son must thank Glenn Beck everyday when Beck highlighted Rules for Radicals as the Bible of Barack Obama. All the teabaggers have to learn and use these principles so that old tired book is getting a second life and probably will sell more this time around.
Republican candidates are openly campaigning on closing down the Government if they win the House. That would have the sole benefit of them not passing anything. But think about that for a minute. The United States is in two wars, in the midst of a borderline Depression, and your political platform is to close down the Government. This is not a random statement but is emerging as a real idea among House candidates.
Forget about the external world but the immediate effects would be Social Security and Medicare payments would not be made, Veterans' benefits would cease, Unemployment iinsurance payments would stop. The last time this happened under the Clinton Administration there was a firestorm of reaction against the Republicans and their leader, Newton Leroy Gingrich.
Chris Van Hollen issued a statement on behalf of House Democrats on this subject, warning all voters what this would mean in practical details.
Elizabeth Warren has drawn over 250,000 supporters on petitions demanding Obama appoint her. Amen!
Governor Moonbeam has emerged with a new ad with Peter Coyote providing the narration. Meg Whitman had gambled that her spending $120 million by Labor Day would create a 10-15 point lead, which Brown could not erase by election day. Brown for his part didn't spend any money but now has started his campaign around California, challenging Whitman to appear with him at 15 townhall meetings. So far she's refused. The Race is basically tied so it's going to cost Whitman about another 75 million of her personal wealth.
Speaking of wealth, the Koch brothers are fighting back against the Jane Mayer expose in the New Yorker with their minions writing op-eds and letters to the editors. Even Howard Hughes maintaned his anonymity better than these guys. Should teabaggers really be named Koch suckers?
The war the Koch Brothers are waging against Barack Obama is reminiscent of their Dad going against Ike "the Kike". Dad helped create the John Birch Society, which encouraged the smears of General Marshall by Joe McCarthy. So it's interesting to recall that Ike passed the Federal Highways Act to create the interstate highway system. In today's dollars it would cost $179 billion. Barack Obama's infrastructure rehabilitation plan costs a paltry $50 billion. But to pay for it might require eliminating some of the oil industry's tax loopholes. Poetic justice for the Koch Brothers, the owners of the world's largest private oil company.
Instead of 9-11, I am heading to Halifax, Nova Scotia this week to visit the memorial to the 10,000 American prisoners of war that died at the hands of the British in the 1812 War. Lest we forget the Brits sent 300,000 white folk to America as slaves before the Revolutionary War. Interestingly, black slavery followed, only when the British companies realized it was more cost effective and profitable to use blacks, rather than whites. While this blog has had to defend Thomas Jefferson from the lies told about him by the Texas Schoolboard and David Barton, I have to admit Thomas Jefferson tried to paper over this aspect of our history and minimize the number of white folks who had actually been slaves or former criminals.
Showing posts with label Saul Alinsky. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saul Alinsky. Show all posts
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
White Men Riot
My wife and I huddled around the computer last night waiting for radio signals from the Midwest. At 1 am loud and clear The End of Radio Show was beamed in. I felt we were like our Central European brothers and sisters waiting for Radio Free Europe to begin. The program was punk rock with a heavy dose of newer bands. For old timers like us, we recognized Fugazi, the Melvins, the Ramones,and the Clash. The D.J. had a melodious, smooth voice which was a nice contrast to the dissonance of the music. By the end we knew some day we would be free. Maybe Leonard Cohen is right," Democracy is coming to the U.S.A." The DJ was my son Ian, who ran the play list off his Ipod, which now sports over 20,000 cuts. I'm sure the students from Oberlin College never heard the bands played last night. So we'll listen every Wednesday until the Wall is torn down.
Have spent the day watching the Health Care Summit. It was exciting as watching paint dry. I didn't get any sense that the Republicans had any intention of trying to reach any agreements. They would talk about principles of policy but not propose anything. President Obama was like the head teacher trying to get unruly students to behave. Why John McCain was there is anyone's guest since his whole life has been spent on government health care, including his stay at the Hanoi Hilton. President Obama politely slapped him down by saying, "The campaign is over, John." Republican Congressman Pat Ryan was the one to watch out for. While he came across as slick, his budget proposals call for ending Medicare and Social Security. That's why he argued against the Congressional Office of the Budget because he desparately needs to demonstrate that any Democratic plan will not cut the budget. His plan has resonance among Republican candidates for the House. All point to his plan of his website and absolutely none of these people talk about cutting the Defense Budget. As it is now, the Obama plan would allow me to purchase medical insurance at the same rates as government employees, a savings of 50%.
I talked yesterday about a coming cultural revolution. But I didn't think it would be conservative. There was one article yesterday on Breibart's news service that convinced me otherwise. I should know better about Baby Boomers--we're a bunch of stoners. Cheech and Chong said they wanted to get stoned with Sarah Palin because it was obvious from what she said that she had the best stash. I disagree. It has to be Frank Gaffney, who must be smoking up a storm. Gaffney gave the Eternal Flame or Flaming Asshole award to Dick Cheney earlier in the year.
Yesterday Frank weighed in on the redesign of the logo for the Missile Defense Agency. This is as big a scandal as Proctor and Gambel's satanic logo of years ago. Drudge and the Freerepublic claim that the new logo is a deliberate rip-off of the Obama campaign logo with the Islamic crescent and star added for good measure. But Frank says it is even more nefarious. Team Obama--the new tag used by the right against the Administration--is acting in a treacherous way by limiting the deployment of missile interceptors and radars in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. This is a deliberate policy of unilateral disarmament, which is to be expected from " an Alinsky acolyte", and shows that the U.S. is submitting to Islam and the "theo-political-legal program the latter's authorities call Shariah." "Team Obama" is accomodating the "Islamic Republic"'s aggressive approach in the Persian Gulf.
Wow! So this Jewish guy who talked like he was from the Bronx ends up in Chicago before Barack Obama and starts advocating Islam and Sharia Law. This sounds like a stoned riff of George Carlin building up to a humorous laugh line. Saul Alinsky son is alive and has been laughing about how his late father still drives conservatives up the wall a generation later. I suggest we get Bill Ayres out of retirement to bomb Gaffney's bathroom. Ayres was always good at blowing up toilets--and a few of his friends. Gaffney could then use that to raise funds. "Bill Ayres wants me dead. Send money!"
I've learned one thing in the last few months--national security conservatives have the widest acceptance of cerifiably insane people than any other demographic.
Have spent the day watching the Health Care Summit. It was exciting as watching paint dry. I didn't get any sense that the Republicans had any intention of trying to reach any agreements. They would talk about principles of policy but not propose anything. President Obama was like the head teacher trying to get unruly students to behave. Why John McCain was there is anyone's guest since his whole life has been spent on government health care, including his stay at the Hanoi Hilton. President Obama politely slapped him down by saying, "The campaign is over, John." Republican Congressman Pat Ryan was the one to watch out for. While he came across as slick, his budget proposals call for ending Medicare and Social Security. That's why he argued against the Congressional Office of the Budget because he desparately needs to demonstrate that any Democratic plan will not cut the budget. His plan has resonance among Republican candidates for the House. All point to his plan of his website and absolutely none of these people talk about cutting the Defense Budget. As it is now, the Obama plan would allow me to purchase medical insurance at the same rates as government employees, a savings of 50%.
I talked yesterday about a coming cultural revolution. But I didn't think it would be conservative. There was one article yesterday on Breibart's news service that convinced me otherwise. I should know better about Baby Boomers--we're a bunch of stoners. Cheech and Chong said they wanted to get stoned with Sarah Palin because it was obvious from what she said that she had the best stash. I disagree. It has to be Frank Gaffney, who must be smoking up a storm. Gaffney gave the Eternal Flame or Flaming Asshole award to Dick Cheney earlier in the year.
Yesterday Frank weighed in on the redesign of the logo for the Missile Defense Agency. This is as big a scandal as Proctor and Gambel's satanic logo of years ago. Drudge and the Freerepublic claim that the new logo is a deliberate rip-off of the Obama campaign logo with the Islamic crescent and star added for good measure. But Frank says it is even more nefarious. Team Obama--the new tag used by the right against the Administration--is acting in a treacherous way by limiting the deployment of missile interceptors and radars in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. This is a deliberate policy of unilateral disarmament, which is to be expected from " an Alinsky acolyte", and shows that the U.S. is submitting to Islam and the "theo-political-legal program the latter's authorities call Shariah." "Team Obama" is accomodating the "Islamic Republic"'s aggressive approach in the Persian Gulf.
Wow! So this Jewish guy who talked like he was from the Bronx ends up in Chicago before Barack Obama and starts advocating Islam and Sharia Law. This sounds like a stoned riff of George Carlin building up to a humorous laugh line. Saul Alinsky son is alive and has been laughing about how his late father still drives conservatives up the wall a generation later. I suggest we get Bill Ayres out of retirement to bomb Gaffney's bathroom. Ayres was always good at blowing up toilets--and a few of his friends. Gaffney could then use that to raise funds. "Bill Ayres wants me dead. Send money!"
I've learned one thing in the last few months--national security conservatives have the widest acceptance of cerifiably insane people than any other demographic.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Health Care You Die; Torture Good
A week away across the midwest to Ohio. It was the first time I've watched television for a year and came away with that feeling one used to get in the sixties when ads were aimed at making you neurotic and anxious about your Bad Breath and Body Odor. Now one is assaulted with medicines for ailments I never heard of. From incontinence, female heart disease, erectile dysfuntion, and ringing in your ears. I thought 50 was the new 30 but you would never know from watching mid-50 year olds suffering from prostate and strange bladder diseases. You would think my generation is reaching crepitude at a blistering pace. And maybe we are.
The good news if this is our condition is that the Republicans tell us we are all going to die. not from Al Qaeda or jihadis, but from Obama's healthcare plan. Michael Steele reversed historical GOP position against medicare and issued a Bill of Health Rights for Seniors, which will preserve Medicare coverage and prevent the Democrats from summarily executing senior citizens through Death Panels. The GOP is warning fellow party members that the Democrats will be using party registration to deny Republicans healthcare. So it's best if everyone registers as an independent just in case. If you are a veteran, you're going to die because of the Democrats' Death Book, which advises serious ill veterans about their end of life options. And in case, you haven't gotten the message, the Democrats will put a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. In fact, it's all going to be run like the DMV--which is actually run at a state level. If a public option is chosen, millions of Americans will lose their private health insurance and they too will die. Even John McCain argues that a public option will destroy the private health insurance industry. And the beat goes on. Real Republican members of Congress are saying on the floor that health care reform is going to kill people. There are actual members of Congress, not the public, who believe Government will intervene in Medicare--at the last notice this was a government-run program.
The birthers and Rush Limbaugh have raised a more serious threat--male circumcision. The birthers believe Obama is not circumcised--which would indicate what I'm not sure. Rush Limbaugh is afraid that under Obama's healthcare he would be cirumcised. All of this was heard in the background as the Center for Disease Control put out a report how circumcision would help control certain illnesses. Naturally, since a black man is President, he's going to sick Eric Holder on white males and shear off their foreskins.
This fear-mongering raises the delicate topic of Death itself. For a party, which is dominated by evangelical Christians and observant Jews, why would death actually be such an issue? If death is not the end, then isn't it worst to go bankrupt through illness and become incapacitated through catastrophic illness? Isn't the long-term effects of destitution on the future of one's family more horrifying than death itself? Let's face it--America is one of the least death obsessed cultures in the world and by talking about it the idea is to raise irrational fear. If you preserve the status quo, you live; if you change, you die. It doesn't matter that the insurance and drug companies are coining money at the people's expense because I'm still alive. And if you change the system,there might be unintended consequences which with long odds might, might result in you not gettting treatment for some obscure and relatively rare sickness.
I'm not sure I know where the Republicans are going with this. I know for sure if Republicans are returned to power, they will sure as shooting drastically cut Medicare and Social Security benefits in the name of cutting the deficit. Many such as John McCain and Newt Gingrich are on record, saying so. There is some archetype that still exists in the Republican Party, which causes an almost knee-jerk reflex to undo the safety net first created by Franklin Roosevelt. I had long thought that had passed. But the rhetoric these days from the base is even blaming Roosevelt for prolonging the Great Depression and arguing that Barack Obama is doing the same through the stimulus package and the increased deficits. There is little self-reflection here that Republicans historically are the big deficit-spenders, almost totally for political motives. In a time when it looks like the United States will be lingering around 10% unemployment for some time, people are naturally anxious, people are worried. So one political strategy is to exploit this anxiety and create real fear. However, if you create fear, you must have something to replace it with--so far the Republicans are found lacking.
Not lacking in entertainment value is the Great Glenn Beck. Dozens of sponsors are fleeing Beck show as he has turned up the amp of his rhetoric against Obama, who now is going to create civilian national security corps to implement policy from the census-taking to poll-watching. Beck, a self acknowledged recovering alcoholic, has been barking lately that he will go down with his ship and re-emerge on a larger stage--hinting that if his 9-12 project goes el floppo or violent Australian mogul will give him the heave-ho. Glenn Beck will then team up with his best fan Sarah Palin and tour the country as ther conservative's version of Elmer Gantry and Aimee McPherson. If you think his incoherence and misinformation is deliberate, it's not--he's that ignorant of political affairs and history. But, there is a role for a conservative/libertarian version of the Jerry Springer Show. I'm not sure Glenn Beck is the best choice but he is ably carrying on to sell atheist Tom Paine to the religous right. And his ratings are knocking off Bill O'Reilly. Alot of the reasons to watch is to guess when he's going to cry and if he is going to commit suicide, which is an unfortunate occurrence in his family. He's like Howard Beal in Network screaming ,"I can't take it anymore" with the cynical television producer checking his ratings. So, do, please keep asking questions.
The conservative movement has fully embraced the Radical Left. There are now seminars on Saul Alinsky's theories of organization for Town Hall conservatives. It seems Republicans got the idea that the entire Obama campaign could not have succeeded without the mastery of these Alinsky principles. Even side figures as movie star Jon Voight claims that Obama is governing based on Saul Alinsky's writings. A lot of this comes from the work done by the Republican Opposition Research on Hillary Clinton, whom they thought would ultimately secure the Democratic nomination. Secretary of State Clinton wrote her senior thesis on Alinsky. So why let 1,000s of pages go to waste. A spokesperson for the Alinsky Institute said, however,"We would never call Mayor Daley of Chicago a Nazi because our goal is to work with people in power." This obvious point has gone unnoticed.
Karl Rove--still avoiding jail--was out on the hustings this week to say that this year the Republicans would be defined as to what they are against. He claimed--presuming he would still have a say in the Party he wrecked--that in 2010 Republicans would define what they are for.
Meanwhile, the Dailykos, which uses the polling firm Research 2000, published a blog called " Political Re-Alignment on Steroids". The piece dissected the recent decline in Obama's polling and ascertained his and the Democrats' strengths according to region. The bottomline is that Obama's approval ratings are basically incredibly strong throughout the country, except in the South. The South, which constitutes 21% of the country, is the only region that shows Republican strength. Generic congressional questions show Republicans with slight leads over Democrats. Everywhere else Democrats have 5 to 1 leads over the generic Republican. Obama's approval rating among White Southerners is a dysmal 9%. With nation-wide approval of congressional Republicans only slightly above 12% or in other polls at about 20%, what appears from digging deep in the Research 2000 numbers is that the Republicans have become a regional party far faster than anyone realised. What is also occuring is that whatever support Republicans used to have among non-whites is vanishing at an even faster rate.
But if health care makes you die, torture makes you good. Eric Holder finally appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the cases of abuse by CIA personnel involved in the torture of detainees. In my opinion,this was inevitable if not necessary because of the obligations of the United States and once stated ideals of advancing human rights. Immediately, the CIA started their Beltway political maneuvering and started to beat the drum of morale falling. What about the morale of those intelligence personnel who thought torture was wrong and have carried out their difficult tasks within the law? I've never understood the morale issue of punishing people who did wrong. Our town paper, The Washington Post today tried to feed the old saw that torture works by publishing a long story about how Khalid Sheik Mohammed after being water-boarded a cosmic number of times became a solid citizen and turned to a new life as a lecturer to the interrogators and assembled military and intelligence personnel on the theology and strategy of Al Qaeda. This was to back up Dick Cheney's claim that everything we know about Al Qaeda comes from the torture program. He no longer argues that imminent threats were averted because the CIA Inspector General's report clearly states this isn't true. But it does say lives were saved--but nobody knows whether they could have been saved without torture. But that's enough to serve as talking points for Republican members on the Hill who have come to the defense of the CIA interrogators. Dick Cheney called these people professionals but the record is showing they had very little training and were often contractors who had no experience in interrogation.
I have doubts about Obama's new interrogation oversight panel, which will be located at the FBI. First, he got it right that the CIA has no experience in interrogation. Only the FBI and the military do and in the case of Al Qaeda, the most successful interrogations were conducted by the FBI without the use of torture. The most successfull actually involved given a diabetic terrorist a sugar-free cookie. But I have deep misgivings about the President of the United States actually being in charge himself of the interrogation program, reporting through his National Security Council. As we saw under Reagan, the National Security Council should not be a policy implementing body.
We end with the war in Afghanistan. No one should be surprised about the irregularities reported in the Afghanistan elections. Nor should one be surprised by the increased casualties taken by our military personnel. Rather one should raise questions of what is our ultimate purpose there. Only a few months ago General Petraeus confirmed what others had already reported--Al Qaeda was not there; it was in Pakistan. Do we want to nation-build and defeat a nationalist fundamentalist group, who have no international terrorism capabities or intent? Or are we after Al Qaeda? My fears are that Al Qaeda will eventually move out of Pakistan and set up shop once again in Yemen and Somalia. Because their ultimate goal is the liberation of Saudi Arabia and its sacred shrines. There is evidence now that at least with proxies this is taking place. But I suspect the leadership will move there as well. Then we will be pouring money and men into a war that like Iraq was peripheral to any war against terrorists.
The good news if this is our condition is that the Republicans tell us we are all going to die. not from Al Qaeda or jihadis, but from Obama's healthcare plan. Michael Steele reversed historical GOP position against medicare and issued a Bill of Health Rights for Seniors, which will preserve Medicare coverage and prevent the Democrats from summarily executing senior citizens through Death Panels. The GOP is warning fellow party members that the Democrats will be using party registration to deny Republicans healthcare. So it's best if everyone registers as an independent just in case. If you are a veteran, you're going to die because of the Democrats' Death Book, which advises serious ill veterans about their end of life options. And in case, you haven't gotten the message, the Democrats will put a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. In fact, it's all going to be run like the DMV--which is actually run at a state level. If a public option is chosen, millions of Americans will lose their private health insurance and they too will die. Even John McCain argues that a public option will destroy the private health insurance industry. And the beat goes on. Real Republican members of Congress are saying on the floor that health care reform is going to kill people. There are actual members of Congress, not the public, who believe Government will intervene in Medicare--at the last notice this was a government-run program.
The birthers and Rush Limbaugh have raised a more serious threat--male circumcision. The birthers believe Obama is not circumcised--which would indicate what I'm not sure. Rush Limbaugh is afraid that under Obama's healthcare he would be cirumcised. All of this was heard in the background as the Center for Disease Control put out a report how circumcision would help control certain illnesses. Naturally, since a black man is President, he's going to sick Eric Holder on white males and shear off their foreskins.
This fear-mongering raises the delicate topic of Death itself. For a party, which is dominated by evangelical Christians and observant Jews, why would death actually be such an issue? If death is not the end, then isn't it worst to go bankrupt through illness and become incapacitated through catastrophic illness? Isn't the long-term effects of destitution on the future of one's family more horrifying than death itself? Let's face it--America is one of the least death obsessed cultures in the world and by talking about it the idea is to raise irrational fear. If you preserve the status quo, you live; if you change, you die. It doesn't matter that the insurance and drug companies are coining money at the people's expense because I'm still alive. And if you change the system,there might be unintended consequences which with long odds might, might result in you not gettting treatment for some obscure and relatively rare sickness.
I'm not sure I know where the Republicans are going with this. I know for sure if Republicans are returned to power, they will sure as shooting drastically cut Medicare and Social Security benefits in the name of cutting the deficit. Many such as John McCain and Newt Gingrich are on record, saying so. There is some archetype that still exists in the Republican Party, which causes an almost knee-jerk reflex to undo the safety net first created by Franklin Roosevelt. I had long thought that had passed. But the rhetoric these days from the base is even blaming Roosevelt for prolonging the Great Depression and arguing that Barack Obama is doing the same through the stimulus package and the increased deficits. There is little self-reflection here that Republicans historically are the big deficit-spenders, almost totally for political motives. In a time when it looks like the United States will be lingering around 10% unemployment for some time, people are naturally anxious, people are worried. So one political strategy is to exploit this anxiety and create real fear. However, if you create fear, you must have something to replace it with--so far the Republicans are found lacking.
Not lacking in entertainment value is the Great Glenn Beck. Dozens of sponsors are fleeing Beck show as he has turned up the amp of his rhetoric against Obama, who now is going to create civilian national security corps to implement policy from the census-taking to poll-watching. Beck, a self acknowledged recovering alcoholic, has been barking lately that he will go down with his ship and re-emerge on a larger stage--hinting that if his 9-12 project goes el floppo or violent Australian mogul will give him the heave-ho. Glenn Beck will then team up with his best fan Sarah Palin and tour the country as ther conservative's version of Elmer Gantry and Aimee McPherson. If you think his incoherence and misinformation is deliberate, it's not--he's that ignorant of political affairs and history. But, there is a role for a conservative/libertarian version of the Jerry Springer Show. I'm not sure Glenn Beck is the best choice but he is ably carrying on to sell atheist Tom Paine to the religous right. And his ratings are knocking off Bill O'Reilly. Alot of the reasons to watch is to guess when he's going to cry and if he is going to commit suicide, which is an unfortunate occurrence in his family. He's like Howard Beal in Network screaming ,"I can't take it anymore" with the cynical television producer checking his ratings. So, do, please keep asking questions.
The conservative movement has fully embraced the Radical Left. There are now seminars on Saul Alinsky's theories of organization for Town Hall conservatives. It seems Republicans got the idea that the entire Obama campaign could not have succeeded without the mastery of these Alinsky principles. Even side figures as movie star Jon Voight claims that Obama is governing based on Saul Alinsky's writings. A lot of this comes from the work done by the Republican Opposition Research on Hillary Clinton, whom they thought would ultimately secure the Democratic nomination. Secretary of State Clinton wrote her senior thesis on Alinsky. So why let 1,000s of pages go to waste. A spokesperson for the Alinsky Institute said, however,"We would never call Mayor Daley of Chicago a Nazi because our goal is to work with people in power." This obvious point has gone unnoticed.
Karl Rove--still avoiding jail--was out on the hustings this week to say that this year the Republicans would be defined as to what they are against. He claimed--presuming he would still have a say in the Party he wrecked--that in 2010 Republicans would define what they are for.
Meanwhile, the Dailykos, which uses the polling firm Research 2000, published a blog called " Political Re-Alignment on Steroids". The piece dissected the recent decline in Obama's polling and ascertained his and the Democrats' strengths according to region. The bottomline is that Obama's approval ratings are basically incredibly strong throughout the country, except in the South. The South, which constitutes 21% of the country, is the only region that shows Republican strength. Generic congressional questions show Republicans with slight leads over Democrats. Everywhere else Democrats have 5 to 1 leads over the generic Republican. Obama's approval rating among White Southerners is a dysmal 9%. With nation-wide approval of congressional Republicans only slightly above 12% or in other polls at about 20%, what appears from digging deep in the Research 2000 numbers is that the Republicans have become a regional party far faster than anyone realised. What is also occuring is that whatever support Republicans used to have among non-whites is vanishing at an even faster rate.
But if health care makes you die, torture makes you good. Eric Holder finally appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the cases of abuse by CIA personnel involved in the torture of detainees. In my opinion,this was inevitable if not necessary because of the obligations of the United States and once stated ideals of advancing human rights. Immediately, the CIA started their Beltway political maneuvering and started to beat the drum of morale falling. What about the morale of those intelligence personnel who thought torture was wrong and have carried out their difficult tasks within the law? I've never understood the morale issue of punishing people who did wrong. Our town paper, The Washington Post today tried to feed the old saw that torture works by publishing a long story about how Khalid Sheik Mohammed after being water-boarded a cosmic number of times became a solid citizen and turned to a new life as a lecturer to the interrogators and assembled military and intelligence personnel on the theology and strategy of Al Qaeda. This was to back up Dick Cheney's claim that everything we know about Al Qaeda comes from the torture program. He no longer argues that imminent threats were averted because the CIA Inspector General's report clearly states this isn't true. But it does say lives were saved--but nobody knows whether they could have been saved without torture. But that's enough to serve as talking points for Republican members on the Hill who have come to the defense of the CIA interrogators. Dick Cheney called these people professionals but the record is showing they had very little training and were often contractors who had no experience in interrogation.
I have doubts about Obama's new interrogation oversight panel, which will be located at the FBI. First, he got it right that the CIA has no experience in interrogation. Only the FBI and the military do and in the case of Al Qaeda, the most successful interrogations were conducted by the FBI without the use of torture. The most successfull actually involved given a diabetic terrorist a sugar-free cookie. But I have deep misgivings about the President of the United States actually being in charge himself of the interrogation program, reporting through his National Security Council. As we saw under Reagan, the National Security Council should not be a policy implementing body.
We end with the war in Afghanistan. No one should be surprised about the irregularities reported in the Afghanistan elections. Nor should one be surprised by the increased casualties taken by our military personnel. Rather one should raise questions of what is our ultimate purpose there. Only a few months ago General Petraeus confirmed what others had already reported--Al Qaeda was not there; it was in Pakistan. Do we want to nation-build and defeat a nationalist fundamentalist group, who have no international terrorism capabities or intent? Or are we after Al Qaeda? My fears are that Al Qaeda will eventually move out of Pakistan and set up shop once again in Yemen and Somalia. Because their ultimate goal is the liberation of Saudi Arabia and its sacred shrines. There is evidence now that at least with proxies this is taking place. But I suspect the leadership will move there as well. Then we will be pouring money and men into a war that like Iraq was peripheral to any war against terrorists.
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